Meghan M. Biro is a globally recognized Talent Management and HR Tech strategist, digital catalyst, author and speaker. As founder and CEO of TalentCulture and Co-Founder of the #TChat World of Work Community, she has worked with hundreds of companies, from early-stage ventures to global brands like Microsoft, IBM and Google, helping them recruit and empower stellar talent.
She began her recruiting career working on a research team at Yale University and then moved into software technology markets. Meghan has been a guest on numerous radio shows and online forums, and has been a featured speaker at global conferences.
She is the co-author of The Character-Based Leader: Instigating a Revolution of Leadership One Person at a Time, and is a regular contributor at Forbes, Huffington Post and Entrepreneur. Meghan regularly serves on advisory boards for leading HR and technology brands.
Meghan has been voted one of the Top 100 Social Media Power Influencers in 2015 by StatSocial and Forbes, Top 50 Most Valuable Social Media Influencers by General Sentiment, Top 100 on Twitter Business, Leadership, and Tech by Huffington Post, and Top 25 HR Trendsetters by HR Examiner.
Meghan can be reached via email at mbiro@talentculture.com, on Twitter at @TalentCulture and @MeghanMBiro, or on LinkedIn.

4 Reasons Leaders Hire In 3D

It’s time leaders got smart about hiring. We have to make sure they do. I know for certain that—as you read this—a lot of creative people are trolling for jobs. People who would completely shake up a company culture in awesome, unthought-of ways, if simply given the chance. But, as my friends all know, unless they have four degrees, years of experience and invented the iPad—it feels like they may well just be talented voices crying in the wilderness.

Our social business culture talks a lot about Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Meg Whitman. Don’t get me wrong, I’m including myself here. Smiles. Two weeks ago I posted here about Mark Z. But have leaders really learned the most important lesson from their success?

Which is precisely this: the most creative people out there may not be—in fact, often will not be—the ones who do things by the book or who “look like” your traditional employees. They will be the ones who break the rules; who may not have finished college (or even high school); who don’t have the standard resume, wear the standard work clothes, or live the “standard career life.”

They may well be the ones to make your company either a household name . . . or, if you overlook them, an example of bad business acumen.

They may well be the people you look back on in five or ten years and moan about not having taken a chance on. The hearing-impaired Thomas Edison whose resume you trashed. The J.K. Rowling who was too much of a daydreamer. The next Steve Jobs whom you didn’t even consider, because he was homeless.

Real leaders set the standards of creativity. To do this, these leaders think, see, and hire without blinders—in 3D. In Meghan-speak, that means they work hard to comprehend the whole person behind each resume. They find the gold in that nontraditional-looking job applicant. That rare gem of a talented and unique person.

In short, true leaders lead.

It’s amazing, though, how many CEOs and so-called leaders are terrified of stepping outside the traditional resume to hire job applicants. It’s almost as if those 4.0 GPAs and honor society memberships on the CVs create a life raft, so that if the applicant turns out to be a bad hire or adds nothing much to the organization, the hiring team can float safely away from any possible criticism of their choice.

Well, in my book there are four watertight reasons for hiring in 3D:

1) Playing it safe, as a general strategy, is not leadership. Period.

2) 3D vision lets you see “the whole job applicant.” You’re going to end up with someone who’s more than his or her GPA. You’re most likely to end up with someone who “gets” your company’s goals because you’ve taken the time to “get” the applicant’s thinking, skill set, background, passions.

3) 3D intelligence—going outside the box—models behavior that encourages creativity in the whole team. Leaders are always modeling behavior. Are you going to model a limits-bounded, non-risk-taking approach to your product or service, or a forward-looking openness to new ideas?

Take shoveling snow here in post Blizzard Nemo Ville. Something that’s on my mind as a nor’easter barrels down on my house. . . . I haven’t managed to find a high tech way out of shoveling (not yet, but I’m working on it). Shoveling is good for me, I tell myself, I always do it myself and I always will. But if an ingenious neighborhooder ever finds a way to convince me otherwise, I’d like to reward her/his creativity and determination. That’s good for all of us. I’m open-minded this way.

So, before I pull on boots and coat and grab the shovel, let me leave you with this example of a leader.

At this point, you may have heard about Kevin Matuszak, a 25-year-old working a Hire-Me campaign to get Applebee’s to make him its online spokesperson. Kevin is definitely creative, passionate and may one day be a “real” leader. But the leader I’m writing about is Applebee’s management.

Not only did Applebee’s leaders respond with humor to Kevin’s very public haunting of it, they suggested to Kevin that he make videos of his campaign. Applebee’s then posted those videos on its own website and shared the #HireKevin love.

Kevin’s career story has no ending yet. We don’t know if Applebee’s will hire him. What we do know is that Applebee’s didn’t close the door with a frown at Kevin’s non traditional career search tactics; they opened the door with a grin. It chose to play in this new digital ballgame, on its own terms: to get a closer look at this passionate “outside of the box” guy, to test his creativity, to go beyond the resume and look at Kevin in 3D – his whole entire person and personality.

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Hi, Andrzej– Thank you for writing. I’m concerned about your situation. The best support I can give to you (having translated your comments with an online translation service) is to urge you to go to your nearest hospital and see about getting free care and… keeping this comment live on this channel. I wish you the best of luck.

This is truly a visionary way to hire. I feel too many times employers are just looking for “cogs” in the big corporate machine who will fit-in, keep their heads down and mouths shut. If we looked for the creative, unexpected and those who don’t have the right resume but the right personality to make a huge impact, corporate America could truly be an innovative place again.

So true, Michelle. How many times do we have to learn that lesson? I’m trying to say that loud and clear in these pages: Wake up, leaders!! There are so many creative and smart people out there without the perfect resume– but with brains, guts, and creativity. I consult with clients about this weekly. Seeing people in 3-D widens the talent possibilities.

PS: Or will you turn your backs for, as Michelle put it, cogs in the big machine? I think we can find the right balance. I certainly hope so.

Great post! It’s true, hiring in three dimensions is better than just hiring a two-dimensional set of qualifications. Sure, what’s typed on a candidate’s printed resume is important. But so is passion, enthusiasm, and outside the box thinking. This is why more companies are embracing video resumes and video interviews in the hiring process. On film, candidates are more than just a list of qualifications. They can show off their excitement for the job and display their outside-the-box thinking, which can really help you hire in 3D.

So true — videos are one of the greatest ways to apply for jobs in 3D — my niece’s boyfriend made a quick 2-minute video on his cell phone that landed him a job as the host of a TV show! That’s pretty rare, I know, but the point is — video DOES allow an employer to see you in 3D, almost literally. Thanks, SparkHire!

How do you define true leaders? Those who are good in attributes or those who are good in results. Business dynamics have changed; Intense competitions, stock market, profitability, innovations and so on. Are these leaders doing enough to create more leaders?

I remember a quote from one great leader – “I don’t believe in taking the right decisions. I take decisions and make them right”.

Cheers to you, Baktiar. I would say that you judge a leader by results, not by attributes. Which is all part of the point: let’s get away from the 2-D resume, let’s look at the whole portfolio of a person!